Five Critical Significant Developments in the Attack on the Rights of Females in the Year 2025.

This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were preparing for a second Trump term. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The torrent and swiftness of presidential directives coming out of the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. The tactic proved effective – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.

The US administration has been the main instigator, aided by vigorous campaigning by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.

This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that work to dismantle advances on numerous fronts. This covers reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.

They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.

We look at five episodes that shaped the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.

The Demise of a Major Aid Agency

In the month of March, six weeks after a key American development organization is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a senior US official reveals that a vast majority of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, predicting that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.

Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference

In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they applaud shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding historic agreements on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.

Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa

Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.

Contraceptive Destruction Order

As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities are blocking usable products to be destroyed.

‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded

Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the expanded global gag.